Rig Rundown: Milian Steffen of SOULHENGE

Today I’ll guide you through my rig that I use for bandpractice and live gigs with Soulhenge. Before we go more into detail, here’s a list of the gear I use:

Instruments: Carvin DC700 / Ibanez RGA8

Guitar processor / FX: Line 6 POD HD Pro X

Amplifier: Laney IRT60 Ironheart

Cabinet: ENGL 4×12 V60 8Ω

Tuner: Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner

Footswitch: Behringer FCB1010 MIDI Foot Controller

Wireless System: Shure GLXD4

Setup

I’ll go through the different steps of the signal chain, which starts with the Shure wireless system. A jack goes down from the receiver to my tuner pedal and goes up again into the POD. The POD generates my distortion (plus FX), which means that I use the amp and screamer simulation from the POD, without having a cabinet simulation selected. Now the signal leaves the POD through the unbalanced output via jack into the Return of the Laney, so I’m only using the poweramp section of my tube head. From there, the signal goes into the cabinet via speaker cable and we’re already at the end of the chain.

Now to switch my patches, I have a Behringer Foot Controller, which is connected to the POD via MIDI. This footswitch allows you to save more presets than you can actually have on the POD, you can also set up both expression pedals (volume and wah for instance).

If I had a rack poweramp unit and a rack wireless receiver, all in one flightcase with the POD, it would look super clean actually, but I built up this rig gradually – first I just played through the Laney, then the POD came, then the wireless system. It’s not a very complicated setup and it’s pretty easy to take to gigs.

Sound

Soundwise, I couldn’t be much happier. I get exactly the sound I want – tight, defined, saturated, aggressive. The POD / Behringer combination allows me to take many effects to gigs without having a huge pedalboard to struggle with, that’s a huge advantage. I’ve never been a pedal guy, so I really enjoy to switch from a heavy rhythm sound to a clean patch with lots of reverb, delay and what not with 1 single foot tap and back again to a lead patch with a different set up reverb etc.

I have one minus to mention though. When you switch patches, the POD needs a fraction of a second to process the order of switching, so the switches can sound quite harsh since there’s a pause between them. Also, reverb and delay won’t ring out after changing the patch.